Month: December 2013

Our team was facing a problem after deploying our code to production. The person sitting on-site was not able to figure out the issue for 3 days. Since already there were escalations and client pressure. Entire team came together on a call from 3 different locations. It was chaotic, lost and frustrating for the team. The issue could not be viewed from offshore. Onsite guy had an vendor team to push any new fix. Since it was an Web Application. The call went for couple of hours into late hours of offshore team. No one had a clue how to find the issue.

In such a situation after a lot of discussion some one told lets debug to the production code via possible tool sets available.

Thus the problem we had in hand could be resolved by a simple process of debugging. Some times in the panic situation we loose our cool. Thus forgetting about the techniques we use in computer engineering. In our case Internet Explore Debugger’s tool helps us to step into JavaScript line by line debugging. Thus finding the exact line in which the error occurred.

This is a common question that strikes your mind even if you have a team of one member. Surprisingly we don’t have any definitive answer for it.

Here is our way of handling this challenge

Always keep a positive attitude in any given situation. I had been a very positive guy but in my last project I allowed Mr Negative to get in me and it had troubled my mind and the project as well.

Always have a non-monetary target for the team to achieve. For example learning new technology at work, inter-personal skill improvement during the work, learning better development practice. Once the team member leaves the team, they must be a better person then they were before.

Keep an open communication while you work with the team. Make sure you have practical and clear deadlines. Even if you are chasing a moving target make sure that all stakeholders are aware about it.

Keep a Fun team session related to non-project activity. This will help your team to understand each other personally. The team will be in a better position to accept each other strength and weakness. It can be as simple as half hour lunch in afternoon.

Take risk along with the team. Make every one aware about the risk for the most challenging task and go for it. Since a nail biting victory will keep the momentum going within the team.